Mass Effect Review

With already glowing reviews from major gaming sites and the public as well, Mass Effect is definitely Game of the Year material. On the surface it is a clean and unique RPG that improves upon RPG giants Bioware's previous successes of Jade Empire and Knights of the Old Republic. On the whole it delivers a great next-gen experience with stunning visuals and narrative despite some technical and game play issues. Hit the jump for the rest.

While Mass Effect has very little in the way a brand new genre-defining innovation, it does however, vastly improve upon what has been done before. The best example, and quite possibly the greatest part of this game, is the unique narrative interface. In previous Bioware games such as Knights of the Old Republic, conversation choices appeared after the character you were talking to had finished, resulting in a stop-start feel to conversations as you read and then choose possible responses. Mass Effect how ever will give you your choices during conversation so you can be ready when its your turn to speak. Also, as oppose to giving you word-for-word responses, Mass Effect will offer you a sort of tone of response choice, with the words describing how you will respond, not what you will respond with. This system is presented in a unique wheel, with kinder options at the top and harsher ones at the bottom. Left hand choices generally offer more conversation, while right hand ones generally signal a conversation end.
This results in a smooth flowing narrative, one in which i don't find myself reading the subtitles just to get to the end and collect my loot, Although the presentation of the speech wheel will allow you to skip through conversation once you know how it works if you so wish.

The Story line is brilliant too, with new and well executed twists on sci-fi standards. Its only a shame that the main plot line is horribly short, clocking in around 12 Hours, although with all the side quests a good 30-40 hours can be had. It has also caused quite a controversy as a possible romance subplot can involve not only interspecies sexual relations (even though the 'scenes' are hilarious to watch) but also lesbian interspecies sexual relations. The game was initially banned in Singapore over this, but this has since been reversed.

Anyway, that's enough praise for now. Underneath all of this lies a unpolished pseudo-RPG that could have been so much better.
For starters the Visuals. OK, so they look amazing. But they also bog the game down like nobody's business, with texture pop-ins happening frequently throughout game play. "Official" loading times, where the game tells you its loading are short (albeit with texture pop-ins again), but its where the game tries to disguise loading times with painfully long elevator rides or "bio-hazard decontamination" that you start to get impatient as the game hastily tries to load all that data. The games unique locations look brilliant, but its when you start doing the side quests you notice the recycled textures.

The combat plays more like Gears of War than the updated KOTOR like it was touted, with the whole cover-duck-shoot playing more like a third person shooter with a overused over the shoulder camera angle than the careful tactical play an RPG should have. The game will occasionally experience horrible FPS drops at critical times as it tries load all the combat physics at once.

Vehicular exploration and combat, while fun at first, turns out to be not only boring and in some cases unrealistic (driving up vertical slopes anyone?), but also insanely hard at higher difficulty levels.

Although i should give credit to Bioware for trying to make an accessible RPG, its exactly that which makes it feel exactly not like an RPG. The dumbed down level system feels abandoned, and the team dynamics feel rushed, with squad control coming across like a tacked on afterthought. Also, standard RPG conventions, the very substance that makes an RPG an RPG, is almost unrecognizable. There are no unique character weapons, with all characters carrying the same four weapons and an encouragement by the game and its achievements to use two squad members exclusively (A point we discussed in class the other day, RPG's generally having uses for all the characters at different points)

However, despite all of its short comings, Mass effect remains a great RPG (late nights being a good indicator) that i cant help but love. A great story and impressive visuals make this a must play RPG Third Person Shooter.

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Game Log

Game Title	Mass Effect
Platform	Xbox 360
Other Platforms possible	-
Dates Played	23/11/07 - 05/12/07
Number of Players	One
Release Date	23/11/07
Developer	BioWare
Developer Loacation	Canada
Brief Overview	Space opera RPG with unique dialogue system. Deep involving narrative, and gameplay that shines through technical faults.
Primary Game Genre	Third Person Shooter
Secondary Game Genre	RPG
Tertiary Game Genre	Third Person Adventure
Single Player/Multiplayer	Single Player
Typical Duration of Game	30 Hours
Out of 10	8/10
Target Audience	Young Adults / Adults
Out of 10 for Audience	9/10
Is it a Success	Yes
Why	Builds upon previous developer successes without being complacent in their accomplishments